solo cross-country!!

Did my solo cross-country trip!

I didn't have time to be anxious about my initial solo. You kind of know it's coming, but then one day the instructor just gets out of the airplane and tells you to fly around the pattern a few times, doing touch-and-goes.

But I had plenty of time to think about my solo cross-country, and, I have to admit, my brain was spending all of its spare cycles over the weekend thinking about the flight. I woke up Friday night realizing that my subconscious was executing cross-wind landings in my slumber. Last night I dreamed I was flying--without an airplane! The cross-country solo seemed like a much bigger deal: going to a strange air port, talking to people on the radio, out of contact with my instructor.

By the way, so that there's no misunderstanding, "cross-country" flying is kind of like cross-country running. It's not literally across the country, but just long distance. In the case of flight training the FAA considers flights to points more than 50 nautical miles distant to be cross-country.

My flight was to Gulfport MS, a distance of 70 nautical miles each way.

Everything really went swimmingly. Once I was in the airplane going through the familiar routine, everything came naturally. Just go down the checklists. Everyone on the radio seemed to be in a good mood and the radio ops went fine. My checkpoints appeared out the window right on schedule: St. Tammany airport, Picayune airport, Stennis international airport.

Gulfport tower cleared me "for the option" (landing or touch-and-go, etc) on Runway 18 so I sort of made up what seemed like a reasonable pattern, flying to the beach and then making a left turn to fly along the coast. There was a significant cross-wind, so I turned final early and let the airplane drift into alignment with the runway. I was happy to feel the cushion of ground effect soften the descent as I levelled off for touchdown.

For some reason the FAA requires landings "to a full stop" during cross-country training (as opposed to simply doing touch-and-goes). The runway was not enormously long and I had used some fraction of it so I requested to taxi back to the threshold. It was evidently not a busy time of day at Gulfport, as Tower instructed me to simply do a 180 and back-taxi on the runway. Took off again and turned out to the West, feeling that the hard parts were mostly behind me.

I was amused to hear my instructor with another student in another plane on the radio flying into Gulfport as I departed to the West.

I think my landing back at Hammond was the smoothest I've ever done. The guy at the flight service station seemed unusually enthusiastic and congratulatory as I closed my flight plan over the telephone, as if he knew it was my first solo x/c. (Of course, he couldn't have known—the FSS guys are all in a bunker somewhere in Texas.)

+2.0 hours solo x/c
total: 32.9 hours